Now, I always thought Beats were over-priced and over-hyped, and thought they were mainly a marker for people who preferred brand signaling over performance (at the risk of angering some of you, I would put Louis Vuitton bags as the leader of this category of products).

Apparently, making Dr. Dre wealthy(er) from his involvement as a co-founder of the product, and enriching the bank accounts of many other hip hop artists for their endorsements, is now "oppression." Hmm. Well, I am happy to do a public service here and take their endorsement checks and thus the burden of this oppression off their shoulders and on to myself. Who says we libertarians are not public spirited?

So what is next? I can't see any particular different between Dre's involvement with Beats and Michael Jordan's involvement with Nike -- are Air Jordans the next symbol of oppression? What am I missing here?

12 Comments

ErikTheRed:

I completely agree with the assessment of Beats headphones (overpriced ODM garbage), but as a symbol of oppression of anything other than the public's taste... that's pretty funny. And for extra irony, I would bet that many of the complaints were expressed through Apple devices...

SamWah:

Trapper_John:

I love the follow-up article where the Dartmouth official apologizes for the "not very nice" media coverage of the protest. “There’s a whole conservative world out there that’s not being very nice,” Ms. Ameer said. Really? A couple of articles that relate accounts of profanity and borderline physical violence during the event constitute "not being very nice"? These students are in for a rude awakening when they leave this coddled space they bemoan for not being safe enough...

Jim Collins:

Allen Ingling:

Overpriced is right. The website blog.bolt.io did a tear-down of the $200.00 Beats headphones and estimated the BOM cost at $17.00. Notably, the headphones contain weights to make them seem more substantial. Bolt accidentally tore down knockoff Beats headphones first and published their findings. Then they realized the mistake, did the real Beats headphones and it turned out about the same. Links here: https://goo.gl/tiK2Az and here: https://goo.gl/LVL2US.

Christopher Ratliff:

I agree that they are overpriced. With so many options available in the market these days, why would anyone choose so highly priced headphones. I have a friend who formerly had one of those headphones, but after a period of time he got another affordable noise isolating earphones from http://www.soundmagic.us/ for an affordable price and is really happy with the quality. One can definitely look for other options that are better and also fit in the budget.